Though my Minolta CLE is normally dead reliable, as the weather has brightened in the Northwest, this has happened: In a series of exposures on ISO400 film in bright light, with the camera in A mode and the aperture at f/11 or f/16, the camera shifts into overexposure after 3 or 4 frames are exposed in rapid sequence. Couple of minutes of rest and it's fine again. Battery strength isn't the problem. Am I operating beyond the upper range of the auto-exposure system's capabilities? Is this a sign of awful things to come? Under other circumstances, in both A and manual mode, it works fine. The obvious answer, of course, is 'don't do that!'

-- Joe Brugger (jbrugger@pcez.com), May 25, 2001

Answers

I have had several occasions where my CLE has done an odd thing, where it just sent the led right off the top of the chart for no apparant reason. I think it has to do with a glitch in the 1980's electronics technology. A few times, I have had to take the camera off "A", rotate the speeds through their full range a few times, and put it back on "A" and it would work fine again. Maybe sun spots? Static electricity? Who knows. I heard that when those cameras do go bad, they just freeze up and that's that, so I wouldn't worry about it as long as its still working.

-- Andrew schank (aschank@flash.net), May 25, 2001.

That's it, Andrew. Fortunately, you can hear it right away in the shutter. Never happened with the M2, though. I think I'll order a manual from Craigcamera to see what it has to say about the exposure range and any other little surprises.

-- Joe Brugger (jbrugger@pcez.com), May 25, 2001.

I had one of these a while back. I gave it up because 1: (main reason) I heard that Minolta wouldn't fix them anymore, 2: the shutter seemed to run slow every so often. The latter problem was fixed by a Bombay repairman who also told me that it was characteristic of the CLE. It would shoot, say 1/15 instead of 1/60 or some such (I can't remember the details anymore). As I recall, the problem would go away if I shot a few frames, which is obviously not the best solution when the camera is loaded with film.

Nice little camera. I just saw one in a photo shop window the other day and wondered whether I should get it (despite the collector's price), but then thought about the reliability issue again and decided against it.

If Minolta supported it, I'd get one tomorrow. I suppose today's equivalent is the Hexar (yes, I know it has a different feature set).

-- rob appleby (rob@robertappleby.com), May 25, 2001.

Hi,

the reason behind most CLE electronics problems is quite simple:

When pressing the shutter release, you always put tear and wear the ASA setting resistor ring, as it is located around the button. When the contact weakens or a little dirt gets inside, the ASA detection and thus the autoexposure becomes unreliable.

Minolta Germany (and I guess other countries as well, as the X-/XG- series are similar) fixes this for approx 60 USD.

Regards, Ville

-- Ville (vstd@gmx.net), May 30, 2001.